19 comments:

This presidential campaign needs some fun. Doesn't JFK know that Al Gore has cornered the market on global warming? I do like the last paragraph of the story, how they close with a positive comment about Kerry's last performance and then drop the other shoe.

This is too rich! PLEASE, PLEASE, M. KERRY, RUN AGAIN! If the gods are kind, Kerry will stumble into the arena...Speaking as a hard-line conservative, nothing could be better than Kerry going for the nomination.

Once more the east coast brahmins are on the prowl to save us cretins from our own slothful ways. Apparently the laws of global warming permits these shills to expend enormous amounts of energy as the price the commoners must pay to hear the message.

I'd be more interested in studying how the earth has tolerated volcanic eruptions for the past 2.5 billion years and how human emissions compare to volcanic eruptions.

I'd be more interested in studying how the earth has tolerated volcanic eruptions for the past 2.5 billion years and how human emissions compare to volcanic eruptions.

Volcanic ejecta is ephemeral in the atmosphere. Pinatubo aerosol, for example, remained in the stratosphere for about two years, and caused a measurable cooling. Tambora's eruption in 1815 supposedly caused the year without a summer in New England and Europe. Again, a quick shock then back to an equilibrium -- and Tambora was the biggest eruption in the past 2000 years.

Such shocks have different timescales than the slow, persistent forcing that might be attributed to increasing concentrations of Greenhouse gases such as Carbon Dioxide or methane.

In retrospect, John Kerry's plan has been obvious. Publish a gooey global warming book with lots of purty pictures, then run as the environmental candidate, a mantle he's done relatively little to claim til now. There is a niche available for one: The environment is not a primary concern associated with Clinton, Obama or Edwards. (Or Richardson or Dodd.)

The only flaw in Kerry's strategy is that his actual environmental "walk" is terrible. What's he got, 10 houses? How many private planes? And where was he on the Cape Cod wind project? Out there yachting with the Kennedys and Walter Cronkite I believe, worried about what the wind turbines would do to their views from the flydecks of their yachts.

I agree with you on Kerry, But Rummy makes perfect sense to those who can grasp his direction. It's not that hard, although he has to be a careful wordsmith in front of the antagonstic Pentagon press. You may not agree with his direction, but that's a different issue.

Cognitive assessment of business execs is one of my specialties. In almost 2 decades, I have consistently found that people who talked in Kerry's confusing style, were themselves quite confused.

It is sad that the Media has characterized him (and other Democrats with limited cognitive skills) as "nuanced", or in the case of the demented Algore, "passionate". On the other hand, Republicans are almost always characterized as "stupid". Nixon was the exception, but then he was "evil".

I think that part of the problem with Kerry here is that he just looks too opportunistic. Algore wrote a book and then a fake documentary, and got a lot of press, approval, etc. Kerry sees this and tries to duplicate it, all the way to the nomination.

Unfortunately, it just makes Kerry look silly. I saw him the other day on TV (maybe C-Span), and was just amazed that he could keep a straight face the way he was talking about the scientific consensus. Something like that if all the studies are now showning that the world will end as we know it if we don't act, then it is time to do so.

Not quite that extreme, but it illustrated his almost total cluelessness about what those studies actually say. Not that the ocean will rise 20 feet, but rather, that given a number of restrictions and assumptions, a model shows that something is more likely to happen. But it is precisely those limitations and assumptions that are too much nuance for Mr. Kerry.

We have talked before about the problem of journalists trying to explain scientific papers to the public, esp. in a place like Global Warming. Politicians seem to be far worse - I doubt that John Kerry has any idea why ignoring the limitations and assumptions is so misleading.

I saw somehere in the last couple of days where someone suggested that most of the time when someone's speech sounds as nuanced as Kerry's, it is really because they are confused.

More and more, I am believing that about John Kerry. Many have pointed out how stupid George W. Bush is. But what must be remembered is that he scored higher on military aptitude tests than did Kerry.

In any case, it almost seems like whenever this man opens his mouth any more, he ends up looking either silly or stupid. Some have made good arguments for getting our troops out of Iraq ASAP. The disconnect between what Kerry says about Iraq to justify his stand, and what is really happening there, is so stark that it is clear that he doesn't have a clue. Rather, someone must have given him polling data about Iraq, and he parotted what he could, but didn't understand what he was saying well enough to keep from screwing it up.

Ditto here with Global Warming. There may be a problem here that needs fixing. But Kerry is one of the last major party candidates who is likely to be able to do something about it. He manages the monumental task of making Algore look intelligent and well informed on this subject.

Someone this last weekend pointed out that maybe one reason that the Europeans are so panicked about Global Warming is that they are actually seeing its effects. Most often, whenever someone points out an effect here, it is countered by a Gore effect here, of unseasonably cold weather somewhere, etc.

The suggestion is that the Europeans are seeing milder winters and hotter summers, w/o the benefits of air conditioning. We, on the other hand, are not overly bothered by the hotter summers (much of our south and southwest already is air conditioned), don't mind the milder winters, and, indeed, both effects are reduced here.

And I think that I fall into this category. Sure, our slightly milder winters seem to leave us with a little less snow pack, and thus may necessitate a little more rationing. But the summers here aren't notably hotter. I just can't get overly upset if the Europeans are going to need air conditioning, or if Manhatten and New Orleans slip at least partially under water.